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It’s been a routine weekend Saturday. Today I got up around 6:30, drank coffee in bed for a while then got dressed for breakfast at Papa-Z’s. It’s a diner on Magnolia and Garfield that has a mostly male clientele. Quite of few of the guys drive their old restored classic cars on the weekend and talk shop. This morning was particularly busy, and I thought I might not get a seat, but because I was on my own I was able to snag one of the small booths. AirPods in, I listened to Mark Williams, who hosts the LinkedInformed podcast and muses about all things LinkedIn.

It’s been a weird day. Stephani went to get her facial and I pottered around the house doing odds and ends. I didn’t want to do any work-related stuff but listened to the LinkedInformed Podcast and it included info on an interesting website booleanstrings.com which concentrates on different ways to search on LinkedIn and Google for contacts. I tinkered with the searches a bit and then read a post about loading contacts into Outlook and then seeing which ones are on LinkedIn. I had never tried that, but when I went into Outlook there were only a handful of contacts, one was a contact record titled “Mum” and it included my mother’s phone number. The top of the contact record said “Click to Chat” and I became quite sad knowing it would be impossible to have a quick chat with her since she is no longer alive.

Stephani arrived home and I reheated some Indian food for her from Wednesday evening.

Then I went for a drive to Costa Mesa to pick up some holiday gifts.

After that, I had an In&Out burger for lunch and went for a 2-minute walk around Sammy’s Camera. I’ve been spending a lot of money lately. The 4K Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera that I back ordered in May finally shipped at the end of October and the $2000 bill caused my credit card to spike, but I budgeted for it, so I am not concerned. I am more concerned that I have not spent a lot of time working with it and learned how to use it. It seems like quite an advanced piece of equipment. It supposedly has a good autofocus, but I am not finding it very good at focusing unless done manually and I think it looks for human forms to focus on rather than furniture. My plan for the camera is to replace one of the Canon cameras I have and use it as a primary video camera and of course, start shooting interviews in 4K. I notice that the battery life is poor, but knew this when I bought it, so I invested in a powerful battery pack and cable, which should be here next week. I’d like to make more videos using nicer cameras. I’d like to make videos for myself, but don’t really know yet what I would talk about.

A few weeks ago I bought a new set of LED lights for my video studio because the cheap softbox lights I had were doing a terrible job on green screen. Upon first use, these new ones weren’t very bright so yesterday I boxed them up and sent them back to B&H Photo. They were borderline good enough, not very bright as I say, and I thought I should do the return now and buy better ones later on. What’s the point of this? Well, if you have good lights and a green screen, you spend less time keying out the green background, and I would like to start doing more live video interviews to generate more content, to branch out from videos of the same people. I feel like I am improving as a video producer, but want more content.

I am sad today folks

All of this tinkering with my gear is a big distraction for what’s on my mind, and that is, missing my Mum, and the tremendous loneliness I feel when it comes to the holidays. When I was looking at the contacts in Outlook, and in Gmail and LinkedIn, there were names of people I haven’t spoken to in years. People from companies I worked for who I’ve lost contact with. They say there’s a loneliness epidemic in America, and I believe it. I am so very lonely. There are hundreds of people to talk to, and no-one to talk to. There are people in the list who I thought were friends who ghosted me this year for unknown reasons. I am hurt by this, but can’t bring myself to ask them why. I must pretend that we just don’t talk that much and that for whatever reason, it fizzled. It hurts. I really cared, you know?

Today is Saturday. I am sitting here in a Starbucks thinking of something to write about. I have my earphones on with no music playing, and my mood is upbeat, well, as upbeat as it usually is on a Saturday. There’s a lot to look forward to. Scotland next year. Losing more weight, getting to do more interesting work at my job, making new friends.

Last week I said I was going to take up Podcasting. So I was thinking of stories to talk about for the podcast but couldn’t come up with any that stood out this week, other than Chester Bennington the young guy who passed away. This gifted musician had so much to live for, he had 6 children. I imagine they are all very sad about losing their Dad. Why are so many gifted rock stars killing themselves?

They say he was hit hard by the loss of his friend Chris Cornell, who took his own life a few months ago. I also read that he struggled with addiction and depression. Like everyone else I’m looking for answers. He must have been in a lot of pain to completely forget his children and the things that make life worth living. But then again, when someone is so depressed like that, it doesn’t really matter does it? They want to break free and let go. Robin Williams wanted to break free and let go. Phillip Seymour-Hoffman wanted to break free and let go.

I guess I just think it’s sad that someone with so much talent and so much to live for can throw it all away like that. I need to keep thinking about what is important in life, I need to appreciate the blue sky, and the smile on my friend’s face, and those little moments that make up a life. Those little jokes. The triumphs, and the joy in living a life that matters. We all matter to someone else, every one of us. We should also be there for our friends when they are down or struggling with loneliness. It can be a cruel beast.

In 1973, the mood of the U.S. populous was grim. The country was weary from a protracted war in Vietnam, and in 1973 it was coming to an end. At the same time, Chrysler and a number of other U.S. auto makers closed a number of factories affecting hundreds of thousands of workers. The U.S. President, Richard Nixon told the nation he was “Not a crook” while he was being investigated for the cover-up of a politically motivated break-in at the Watergate office tower in Washington D.C, and the Supreme Court made abortion a constitutional right.

It was a heady time. So, in 1973 Paul Simon thought about all of this, and wrote the following words:

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right
For lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
We’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

The name of the song is “American Tune“, and it’s a song that has been a part of my life for decades, but today it has a much deeper meaning. This morning, as I sat eating breakfast in the Quiet Cup, I listened again holding back tears as the words fell from Simon’s lips.

Think of America today and listen to this song, and you will hear the heart of a nation breaking. Today we are even more divided politically. So many of our arguments are settled by bullets or courtrooms and not so much with compassion and love. Our President is under investigation for colluding with the Russians to influence the outcome of the election. While times are good economically, morally I think we have lost our way.

It’s the poets, songwriters, and God bless them, the free press who will save this country. We must listen to the truth and listen to our hearts and talk to one another as neighbors and fellow Americans. We must question the authenticity of what we read on social media, and pursue the prosecution of the corrupt.

I don’t know what Paul Simon thinks of what’s going on today in America, but I would imagine he would say something quite similar about the current state of affairs.

This is my favorite verse:

Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune

Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right
It’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

Saturday marked the one year anniversary of my mother Evelyn’s passing. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. When I wake up in the morning, I can remember her voice and the countless messages she would leave on my answering machine checking in on me. During times when she had no phone, she would drop all of her coins into a phone box located down the hill, it was a phone box I would eventually drive past with my wife when we came over to visit. That’s how she was. She had a heart of gold and would give you her last penny if she loved you.

We saw many sides of Evelyn in her final years. I am choosing to remember her laugh, and those wonderful phone calls where she had such wisdom for me. I’m learning to stand on my own now.

It’s been a difficult year

I’ve fallen off the wagon taking care of my health. For a while there I was doing good, but news of Mum’s death threw me into a spiral of recklessness. I became very isolated, comforting myself with food. For months I thought about dying in the same manner she died. I thought about death a lot. I thought about the big machine of the medical system and how we can all get pulled into it, but eventually realized Evelyn was in very good hands in her native Ireland, probably much better hands than I would be here in the United States. Work was something I used as a diversion and so I kept busy through 2016 and now well into 2017.

While this was going on Stephani was fighting her own battle, taking care of her ailing Grandmother who late last year fell and injured her leg, losing mobility. She spent considerable time these past few years visiting Nana, taking care of her, and it has been such an incredible challenge for her.

The sun brings a new opportunity to heal

I wake early every day, prioritizing exercise and immersing myself in a good podcast or audio book. We’ve been ordering Blue Apron dinners and eating healthier. We are both feeling happier and healthier. Dad and I recently reconnected and it has been nice speaking with him again. I hope to convince my brother that blood is thicker than water.

I’m learning that life isn’t about what you have, it’s who you have in your life, and how you spend your time enjoying it. I will live the remainder of my days honoring my Mum and living a life she could never have. She paid a great price to give it to me.

It’s been quite a terrible year. I’m sitting reflecting on the year that just passed drinking coffee, having a think about what 2016 dealt and what 2017 might hold.

A body in decline

Things had not been going well for my Mum these past few years. At the start of the year I noticed that the words in her vocabulary had started to become limited and our interactions by Skype phone had become weekly check-in’s to make sure she was keeping warm, that the care givers were visiting her, and that she was using the electric fire in her bedroom, the appliance we had installed, but that she felt was too costly to run. She had recovered from a nasty chest infection a few years prior that landed her in the emergency room and in recovery for close to a month. But now her memory was failing her as she tried to remember Stephani’s name and sometimes even mine. Her greatest challenge in the end was her fight against Cancer and COPD, which would again land her in the hospital, this time from a broken hip. She was trying to switch off or turn on electricity to a power strip next to her television, and toppled over, breaking her hip.

This month I have been remembering what it was like for Mum near the end of her life. Gasping for every breath. Shouting at the nurses. Being sedated. Staring off into space for hours at a time as I sat at her bedside making small talk, repeating questions I knew she had answered an hour or so before. My job was to keep her in good spirits by bringing up the good times. I’d say my Mum had a relatively happy life once she met my Father, but the marriage was not easy. We moved around quite a bit as Dad made the leap from lorry driver to antique dealer to U.S. immigrant, taking us along for the ride of our lives. She developed a dependency on alcohol during my teen years, and this only seemed to amplify her inner sadness and feelings of low self esteem. I remember coming home finding her drunk and crying often. She had a very sad streak in her personality. But the sad streak was a gift too because she wrote some lovely poetry. I know I inherited this from her.

Self awareness

This year I have spent a lot of time self analyzing my own traits and trying to develop more self awareness. I know that I have the sad streak. I know where it came from, the challenge is managing it and living with it. This month I have been sad a lot. Some days it has been hard to get out of bed. Some days it has been hard to smile because it will be the first Christmas I will not be able to Skype Mum and talk about the good old days. I think what’s different compared to three or four years ago, is that I am able to recognize when I am sad and I know that the feeling will pass in time, so I get on with my work and move forward.

Death

This year we lost so many great and talented artists. David Bowie, Prince, Greg Lake to name a few. David Bowie knew he was dying and decided to look death in the face and laugh, leaving us a beautiful thank you card in his “Blackstar” album. Prince passed away from complications related to a dependency on opiates, something thousands of fans found hard to accept, and Greg Lake, from Emerson, Lake and Palmer passed way at 69 after a long battle with Cancer. Only recently have I started to appreciate Greg’s music, even wonderful 80’s rock anthems like “Heat of the Moment” which he sang with his band, ASIA, and ELP’s “From the beginning”, which I love to play on the guitar occasionally. Greg wrote a beautiful Christmas song called “I believe in Father Christmas” and I think this one song will be his swan song, remembered and sung for years to come.

I hope Joe Biden continues to work on President Obama’s Cancer Moon Shot project to cure cancer. It is taking so many victims. But after the election, and seeing the kind of administration we will have near term, my hope for lofty, aspirational ideas like curing cancer are slowly fading with each cabinet appointment.

I hope 2017 is a much better year than this one. I can’t wait till 2016 is over, so we can move forward as a country, and as individuals in whatever battle we are waging personally.

Good health and happiness to all of my friends in 2017. Your friendship means more than any of you know.

Fifteen years ago today I woke up to the sound of the today show, sitting in bed drinking coffee with my then Fiancé Stephani. I remember watching them break away from their current story to lower Manhattan where a fire was reported at the World Trade Center, and minutes later we saw a second plane fly into the building. We sat there in utter disbelief at what we were seeing.

All I wanted at that moment was to hug Stephani and keep the frightening World from coming into our home. Every day from that moment on would be a blessing for us. We have our lives, nobody can hurt us, can they? Could they hurt us? Why do they want to hurt us? We did not understand.

I had lost my job a few months before this, laid off as the tech sector underwent a tumultuous time. Things were bad. I couldn’t find work, I was depressed, and now this. Whatever this is, I wasn’t sure. But I remember staying glued to the television for most of the day hypnotized by the footage of the twin towers burning. Our country was under attack, things would never be the same.

I remember the images of people hanging out of the windows in the building, some were starting to jump out and fall to the ground. I remember thinking what an awful death. The desperation. Those firemen and first responders running into the building not knowing it was about to come down on top of them. All of those families losing their loved ones all at the same time. The magnitude of the attack was incomprehensible.

In the afternoon I had an appointment to meet in Anaheim with a woman I did business with in my prior job. It was an interview to see if we could work together on a contractor basis from what I recall. I remember getting dressed for the interview and not wanting to go, but forced myself to drive to Anaheim. When I arrived for the interview, both of us were very preoccupied with the events taking place on on the east coast and decided to reschedule the meeting. I had this overwhelming desire to be at home in my condo watching what was happening.

I’ve never really understood why some people hate America so much. This country has given me a rich life of experiences and opportunities. Why would someone want to destroy that? I still can’t wrap my head around it. I know it had a lot to do with military bases in Saudi Arabia and politics. I just have never been able to understand why they hate us enough to take their own lives and the lives of innocent passengers.

About a month after September 11th Stephani and I got married. It was a wonderful day. Our friend Andy played the bagpipes for us. Andy passed away a few years ago. My Mother couldn’t make it to the wedding, we were so sad she missed it, and now she has gone too. We are all going to be gone some day. We must make the most of our lives, fill them with rich joyous experiences, because we only have so much time here. We should never live in fear because doing so would mean that those who wish to terrorize us have won. I am so lucky to live in a country where I can work and enjoy life.

Fifteen years later I have a better understanding of why the attacks happened. But the World is a sadder place. We are safer sure, but the fighting rages on around the World. On September 11, 2001 we were one country, one people, but I can’t say that today with the bitter political divisions as we head into election season, one candidate running on fear tactics and the other representing the status quo. I can only hope for better days and peace as we remember those lost. I am sure they would want us to hope for peace.

Well it’s April 27th, my Birthday. I’m sitting in the kitchen having a coffee, flipping through Facebook smiling. It’s been a hectic few months at work, and there’s been health trouble for my Mum in Belfast. But other than that, life is great.

When I was 25 I was a very worried guy. I worried about everything. Whether I would be able to pay my bills, if I would find a good job, if I would become famous and if I would ever find love. It was all one big ball of worry. When I was in elementary school, one of my Teachers noted on my report card “Gary is a worrier”. He must have been in tune with what was bothering me, worry has been at the root of my being ever since I was a child.

As a grown man I can see the error of my ways. Worry will get you nowhere. At 25 I had been in the United States for 8 years. I had just got my green card, and my first “real” job as a van driver for Inacomp. I was in a band and would write songs in my spare time. Listening to those songs today I cringe, because the worry came out in my writing. I was 25 in a new country with nothing but opportunity before me, yet my mind was preoccupied with worry.

If I could take a trip in time back to my 25 year old self I would look him in the eyes and promise him that life will turn out just fine. To stop worrying about things. Stop taking everything so seriously. I would tell him to insist on better healthcare for that ear infection and save that hearing in the left ear.

At work I fumbled through life fueled by worry. I’d tell my 25 year old self about the joy of sitting still, and the joy of taking a walk and looking after one’s self. I’d tell him that rejection will happen, some people will fall out of love with you, but there will be moments of clarity down the road when it will all make sense, and your best friend will be sitting on a park bench right next to you.

It’s a happy birthday indeed. I am a man who is finally becoming self aware. I know where this worry came from, it’s in my DNA, it’s how I was wired. But I am learning to accept it and live a life of purpose, seeking work that challenges me and new friends who understand me.

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As we normally do on Sunday afternoon, Stephani and I stopped in to our local grocery store to pick up some food and supplies for the week. As we were checking out I could hear Stephani strike up a conversation with Maureen our checker. I’ve seen Maureen before, a quiet, kind woman. Today she seemed a little sad.

Not hearing everything they were conversing over above the background noise I moved the items from the shopping cart onto the moving conveyor, tossing our canvas bags on top and putting up the next divider for the person behind us.

Maureen was talking about an item the last customer bought. She mentioned “Seal Beach” and on today’s copy of the daily paper, the Orange County Register, the cover featured a courtroom image of Scott Dekraai. Scott was a former tug boat captain who in 2007 gunned down his ex-wife and seven other people at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach. It was the worst mass shooting in Orange County history. Dekraai went to Salon Meritage looking for and targeting his ex-wife Michele Fornier, Maureen’s sister. Today, in addition to scanning cans of peas, pasta, fruit, bread, beer and whatever else Huntington Beach had on the shopping list, Maureen was scanning copies of the Orange County Register featuring the face of her sister’s killer.

I am not sure if she had any alternative to working today, but if I were her boss, I would have gladly given her the day off.

We told her we remembered that awful day as if it was yesterday. It was horrible. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have lived through that experience, losing your sister to a monster like that. Just terrible.

It made me remember that each one of us is fighting our own very personal sadness each and every day. For Maureen, it is trying to get over the loss of her sister, greeting customers with a smile as they wait in line, consumed with their own lives, thumbing their mobile phones, missing out on an opportunity to cheer up perhaps the saddest person in the room, the person right in front of them.

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by Check out this sweet looking ride parked in Huntington Beach today. We walked around Huntington Beach today, this crisp, windy last day of 2014. We had some lunch at the end of the Pier at Ruby’s Diner, always great … Continue reading →

It’s been a peaceful Thanksgiving. We had dinner with the family. Festivities included arranging our nieces and nephews to recreate a famous family snapshot in the front of my in-laws house. As is normal with me lately I enjoyed things from afar, sneaking candid photos of the family while the rest of them conversed, keeping this otherwise quiet Southern California cul-de-sac buzzing with conversation about Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, college studies, church fund raising and even Cyber Monday. We all enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, celebrated by millions of friends, neighbors and countrymen.

Later in the evening Steph and I were in bed watching a movie when the phone rang. It was Stephani’s Mom, Dottie. The conversation consisted of “no”, “for how long?” and “We’ll be right there”, at which point she put the phone down and told me her Dad was feeling ill and we needed to take him to the hospital. We threw on whatever outfit made sense in a panic and bolted out of the house.

When we arrived back at my in-laws and entered the house, I could see my Father in law, John, hunched over the kitchen table in obvious pain. I’ve never seen him grimace like that before, so we got him into the car and headed off to Hoag Hospital. He told us he had pain in his lower right side for the past five hours and had been vomiting, so the hospital recommended bringing him in as a precaution.

We got him checked in, Dottie went with him while Steph and I sat in the waiting room and watched the steady stream of patients come in over the next few hours. A woman who had been drinking wine came in with her right hand bandaged and held above her head, her fingers were purple. She had apparently fell and landed on glass. There were drops of blood on her orange shirt, or was that Cabernet? After the wine lover came “Tequila Sam”, a large man now positioned in a Hoag Hospital wheelchair. Tequila Sam had sprained his ankle earlier while drinking tequila. He looked a little bit like Bryant Gumble, was jovial, even disclosed to us in the first 60 seconds that he had been married four times. He was wearing expensive slacks that had been cut to length with scissors, which gave him a slightly homeless look. His companion wore expensive snowboarding pants and sat quietly across from Tequila Sam as stretch marks around his ankle grew larger while he was feeling no pain.

We sat in the waiting room gazing at our mobile phones until a slim man in dark jeans and hoodie stood in front of us pacing. He looked like a healthy Southern California surfer in his mid to late 50’s. I didn’t get his name, but he looked like a Sal. So let’s call him Southern California Sal. Sal had striking white cropped hair, was either very tanned or of Hawaiian descent. He had a magnificent white toothy smile, and white white eyes which peeked out from his silver rimmed glasses. He was nervous and jumpy. After a few seconds he sat in the chair in front of us and started to recount why he was at ER. He pointed out a young man on the far end of the waiting room who was sitting with his wife and a young teenager, and told us that he and the man had become friends over the past few months. The man had recently relocated his young family to Southern California from New Orleans. Sal said “He was like a breath of fresh air to the neighborhood.” A few days ago his new neighbor’s Father flew in from New Orleans to join them for Thanksgiving and while at the airport fell and broke his shoulder and injured other parts of his body. He was a man who had lived the hard life, had, as Sal put it “not taken care of his body”. He wound up at Hoag Hospital for two days and had been checked out with a clean bill of health on Thanksgiving morning.

Sal was instantly likable and someone who I wished I could trade for one of my current neighbors. He was friendly without being pushy, and had a kindness about him. I started to sense that I was not giving him 100% of my attention given the gravity of the current situation, checking the screen of my phone. But then he told us why they were there tonight. He said they were all enjoying Thanksgiving dinner together when his neighbor’s Dad stopped breathing and went down. Sal had a firefighter background and knew CPR, while his neighbor called 911, Sal performed CPR until the ambulance arrived saying “I wasn’t going to let this guy get away from me.” Sal had our full attention at this point. Stephani and I sat there listening to him retell the past 30 harrowing minutes.

The door of the ER flew open and the doctor called the name of the son who was sitting in the far side of emergency. The two of them went around the corner and the two women who were with him went into the ward. After about 2 minutes the door of the ward opened and the two women slowly walked out. They were crying. Sal walked up to them and they said “He didn’t make it.”

We don’t know why the man died. All we know is these two neighbors were enjoying a Thanksgiving meal together. Sal’s 6 year old daughter had presented his neighbor’s Father with “Get well soon” paintings just a few hours earlier and Sal wondered how he was going to be able to explain to his little girl that the man had not survived. Sal called a cab, but before he left he shook our hands and said how nice it was to talk with us about it. I think in that moment he just wanted somebody, anybody to talk to. Minutes later I thought to myself wow, I just touched the hand that within the past hour had been pressing on his neighbor’s family member’s chest, trying to keep him alive.

After a battery of tests John was released and Stephani took him home. It’s been one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever, getting to see how my neighbors are helping each other. This morning I wonder where Sal lives and hope I run into him again at a Starbucks. The next time I will get his number and try to make a new friend. Sorry I didn’t seize the opportunity to do that this time Sal wherever you are.